Since last week everyone with a keyboard has thrown in their two cents about Apple’s newest device, the (poorly named in my opinion) Apple iPad. A tablet computer built to be ‘better than an iPhone and better than a laptop.’

Many have called it a ‘jumbo iPod Touch’ and they’re not far off. Built on the iPhone OS, the iPad really does have some impressive features and what it represents is far more important than it’s current form.

I’m a geek. I know computers pretty well. I’ve fiddled with multiple operating systems, learned to dig through Explorer windows, folders, and libraries to find files, jumped through hoops and at times inflicted upon myself headaches unparalleled trying just make things work *and* look nice.

The iPad is not a tinkerer’s machine (unless [until] you can jailbreak it, then it’s another story.) It’s meant to be a easy, no nonsense way to write emails, check out videos, listen to your music, and browse the web for the Average Joe, who know nothing of command lines or even Start buttons (yes, they’re out there, I work with them.) Computer users who don’t know a program exists on their PC unless there’s a shortcut right on the desktop. There are big, clearly labeled buttons to explain what things do on the iPad, and when you open them, they open full-screen! No managing windows or minimizing or searching the taskbar, no setup required. I think there’s definitely a place for such a device in people’s lives. I think the iPad is going to be a huge hit with baby boomers. No more haranguing their children and grandchildren into teaching them to use a computer; it’ll just come naturally.

Recently I watched a clip on youtube where someone had cut up the keynote last week into just the adjectives. Simple. Easy. Beautiful. That’s what Apple envisions as the future of personal computing. I can’t say I disagree, so long as there’s still something around to tinker with, be it a PC, or an Android device. I’m looking forward very intently to the next iteration of the iPad, or a tablet device running Chrome OS or Android. Apple has made a bold move heading down this path, hopefully others will follow.

Word Count: 374

I’ve had my Dell Mini 9 netbook for about a year now, and I’m happy to say I’m still using it off and on, though less so due to a certain magical phone.  As of late it’s been a sort of test machine for trying out different operating systems and tinkering.  Jolicloud was my primarly OS on my Mini 9 for a long time, as it was free and well supported. Recently, however, I wanted to try something different, something I don’t have much experience with:  OSX.  Until this weekend the most experience I had with Apple’s operating system was either with the iPhone 3GS or my battered old iPod Video.  Being the curious sort, I wanted to fiddle with it, and as Gizmodo discovered, the Dell Mini 9 is a near-perfect match for OSX, creating a small, lightweight ‘hackintosh’ netbook.

After checking out a few guides and how-tos, I enlisted the help of Phil.  Here’s what I needed to get the job done:

• A computer already running OSX: easier than handling any weirdness or needing an external DVD drive, enterprising techs cobbled together a very helpful program to copy the install DVD to a flash drive
• A Dell Mini 9 (or 10v) you can score the Mini 9 on Dell’s Outlet site refurbished for >$300, look around for one that suits your needs.  The Mini 10v is a slightly larger model with a few more bells and whistles and a crisper screen.

  

• flash drive (~8GB): needs to have a decent capacity to handle all the data being moved over to it

  

• A retail copy of OSX: It’s only $30 and you might as well support Apple, it will at least ease some of the guilt for breaking/bending the EULA

  

• Optional (but recommended): 2GB of RAM for the Mini 9, a 8-cell battery, as well as at least a 16GB HD, though bigger is better.  I’ve got a 64GB SSD installed in mine and it set me back ~$200. They’re even cheaper these days.

The install was fairly painless.  The Netbook BootMaker app made the process as easy as clicking and dragging the disk image to the app, pointing it to the flash drive, and waiting. Twenty minutes later the flash drive had OSX on it, ready to pop into my Mini 9.  After a reformat and partition-creation process the install took about an hour or so; thankfully I remembered to bring my power cord, as the stock battery on the Mini 9 isn’t working so hot these days. Boot time is about the same as Jolicloud or Windows XP, around a minute, which isn’t terrible, and I can run multiple apps simultaneously without any slowdown.
After a few more steps I had OSX installed on my Mini 9.  It’s been an interesting experience so far.  I really, really like the unified aesthetic of both the system apps as well as the third-party programs I’ve installed.  If I had one gripe it would be about the keyboard of the Mini 9.

The keyboard, to put it bluntly, is only for dainty-fingered folk such as myself, with a lilliputian layout and some odd descions as to where to put the quotation key, as well as a tiny Alt key, and miniature Shift keys.  As such using some keyboard shortcuts like CMD+C and CMD+V take some getting used to.

Alt-Tabbing doesn’t work the same as Windows, which takes some getting used to.  If an app is taking up the full screen and you Alt-Tab to another, it won’t necessarily bring it’s windows into focus.  I suppose it makes sense from one perspective, perhaps if you needed to pull information or content from the first app into the second, but it’s still a bit odd.  The Exposé corners helps to alleviate this, though.  Each corner of the screen acts as a hotspot for different Exposé actions, like displaying all open windows, hiding all and displaying the desktop as well as a few other features.
So, for under the same price as an iPad you get a fully functional version of OSX Snow Leopard in a solid, portable device.  Who says netbooks aren’t good at anything?

Word Count: 690

The iPhone is a fantastic device, with many excellent features and apps, but not without it’s faults. Apple’s restrictive policies meant that many features were locked away from a stock device for sake of stability and a solid user experience. Multi-tasking is left by the wayside in favor of giving individual apps plenty of memory, even with the faster and more technically-capable iPhone 3GS. Thus, a community of hackers began to dig into the guts of the iPhone to unlock these features and create apps to take full advantage of the finest smartphone to date. Jailbreaking, as the process of running modified firmware on an iPhone is called, was a risky process in the very beginning. There was the potential of ‘bricking’ your phone, leaving you with a very shiny paperweight. These days, thanks to the iPhone Dev-Team and the infamous iPhone hacker Geohot, jailbreaking the iPhone can be as simple as pressing a button. So, how do you jailbreak the iPhone? There are few different methods, both on Mac and PC. The two biggest are the iPhone Dev-Team’s Mac Pwnage Tool and Geohot’s Windows Blackra1n program. Jailbroken apps can be found on ‘Underground App Stores’ like Cydia and Rock Your Phone. The best how-to instruction for both programs can be found at iClarified, a fantastic Apple resource site. Anyway, enough exposition, on to the pretty pictures! Here’s a quick shot of my homescreen, using a custom theme called Suave with the jailbreak app Winterboard.

Winterboard is the number one jailbreak theming app, allowing you to create custom backgrounds and icons, as well as modifying additional UI elements to your heart’s content. Notice the custom alert badge and five-icon dock.

Above is a combination of two different apps, Backgrounder and Kirikae. Backgrounder, as the name suggests, allows you to run multiple apps at the same time on the iPhone. Instead of having to close out of one, open another, then close out the second to reopen the first, apps are stored in memory. Kirikae puts a solid UI and Windows-like Taskmanager onto Backgrounder, creating a list of favorites for quick-switching and killing backgrounded apps. A must-have for any jailbroken iPhone. The second screenshot includes customized ‘flags’ to indicate what apps are running in the background on the springboard.

One of the biggest quirks of the iPhone is that in order to turn on and off functions like Bluetooth and Wi-Fi, you had to dig through several pages of settings to reach their toggles. Jailbreak app SBSettings is an excellent solution. With a single swipe across the top panel of the iPhone, an attractive (and themeable!) UI slides down, with a number of options now just a swipe away.

Finally, there is Orbit, a very slick jailbreak app for quickly moving between pages on your iPhone. Instead of swiping back and forth through up to twelve pages of apps, Orbit creates a Mac-like Exposé view all of your pages, allowing you to jump quickly from your homescreen to your last screen in just two taps.

This is the first of probably a few writeups on the iPhone I’ll be doing since it’s my new Favorite Toy, so expect more sometime soon, likely about some of my favorite apps, both jailbroken and otherwise.

Feel free to throw me some questions or comments!

Netbooks! They’re a new class of personal computers designed to work as an accessory to a main laptop or desktop computer. Ranging from 7″ to 12″ screens, they’re typically underpowered when compared to a standard laptop, but can run common programs and operating systems well enough to surf the net, hammer out a quick email, watch a Youtube vid and chat with your friends. Some use a traditional HD, while some of the newer ones use a solid state drive. One of the advantages of a SSD is improved battery life and less chance of wear-and-tear as there are no moving parts. However, SSD prices and capacity are way higher and lower, respectively, than a physical hard disk in the current market. Speaking of price, most models are dirt cheap, roughly $300, though more often than not you can track down some of the older eeePCs and Dell Minis on the cheap. I’ve seen some of the original eeePCs on sale for as little as $150.

So who makes these things?

A number of different companies have jumped into the netbook market, the biggest being Asus with their eeePC line of netbooks, with more than a dozen different flavors and varieties for sale. Dell has four different netbooks available right now, the Dell Mini line, including 9″, 10″, 11″, and 12″ models for sale. There’s also smaller companies releasing their own unique netbooks, like Always Innovating, with their TouchBook.

So, what kind of operating systems can be run on a netbook, anyway?

Damn near anything you want to throw onto it, though some are easier to install than others, with the biggest hurdle being that most netbooks lack a optical drive. An external drive will make things easier, but most OSes can be installed from a decent-sized thumbdrive (~8GB is preferred.) A majority come with Windows XP already installed on them. Programs like UNetbootin make it easy, automatically downloading the proper CD Images and configuring them for you. In addition a number of guides have been put together by folks from Gizmodo and Lifehacker to get your preferred OS onto your tiny computer.

As stated above, most netbooks have XP on them by default, as it’s suited to their lower-end specs. In addition, Microsoft’s latest OS, Windows 7 has been tailored for use on netbooks, with the Windows 7 Release Candidate available, free to use until mid-next year. Here’s an excellent guide on how to install Windows 7 on damn near any netbook on the market today (provided you have the space on your HD for it.)

“Whaaaah?” Yes OSX can and will run on several different netbooks, with the Dell Mini 9 being the most OSX-friendly one available as of now, according to several reviewers (at least until Apple releases their own device.) Be warned, however, that the installation of OSX on a netbook violates the EULA of the software. If you don’t mind the bending of the law, Gizmodo put together another great guide for installing it on the Mini 9, as well as one for the eeePC.

It’s free! However, Linux is not for the faint of heart. Oftentimes it requires a number of additional bits of configuration and tweaking to run how you want it to. The most popular Linux distribution is Ubuntu, a community-supported desktop OS with a slick layout and prides itself on being a bit snappier than other OSes. Fair warning, however, that some software isn’t supported by it, though there are often free user-created alternatives. Ubuntu itself has spawned several alternatives, each with it’s own pros and cons. Ubuntu 9.04 codename: Jaunty Jackalope: released just last month, Jaunty is the newest edition of the Ubuntu operating system. There haven’t been huge changes from the previous version, Intrepid Ibex, but enough that it’s worth updating. Ubuntu has a 6-month development cycle, with the next update to be released this October, codename Karmic Koala; Karmic has been touted as ‘extremely netbook friendly, with an emphasis on speedy boot times, reliability, and cloud-oriented computing services’

• Ubuntu 9.04: the standard OS, usable on desktops and portable computers alike.
• Ubuntu Netbook Remix: designed with netbooks in mind, UNR provides an icon-based GUI for your netbook.
• Linux Mint: Developed concurrently with Ubuntu on a slightly different release schedule, Mint provides a clean, friendly desktop environment good for the first-time Linux user.
• Jolicloud: not much is known about Jolicloud, to be released this summer. So instead, here’s a pretty picture:

Useful programs and utilities designed for netbooks:

• GMABooster [Windows and Linux]- overclocks the processor of netbooks, allowing them to run some games and apps they wouldn’t normally be capable of running. CAUTION: there is a chance it could lead to burning out your processor or bricking your netbook. Remember to turn it off when you don’t need the extra processing power.
• GNOME-Do [Linux]: inspired by OSX’s Quicksilver launcher, some folks created Do. Do works as an app launcher, but includes a growing number of plugins allowing you to add events to your Google Calendar, generate searches from the desktop, create emails, post to Twitter, upload photos to Flickr, and control your media player.
• Dell Mini 9 BIOS Flash Utility [Dell Systems Only, need at least one machine running Windows]: Some folks have had trouble upgrading the BIOS on their Dell Mini systems; this utility helps with that process. *USE AT YOUR OWN RISK*
• Rocketdock [Windows Only]: A dock program designed to make navigating your system easier, and it looks snazzy to boot.
• Launchy [Linux, Windows]: Launchy is another application launcher that had a number of configurable plugins and skins.

Useful Websites For the Netbook User

• Official Ubuntu Forums: great for support for anyone using Ubuntu on their system, plenty of people who will help you out, albeit with an air of snootyness.
• Ubuntu Mini: great site for folks using Ubuntu on the Dell Mini 9, with tips, guides and suggestions on how to get it running smoothly. While tailored to Mini users, a number of the tips and suggestions will work on any system running Ubuntu.
• mydellmini: another great resource for folks using the Dell system, using any OS.
• eeeuser: forum community for eeePC users with guides and tips.